Deborah Orr: ‘Why is feminism still so afraid to focus on its flaws?’

Doris McT is on fine form today. Maybe it’s the new brand of ginseng tablets she’s started taking. She’s just tracked down an insightful article by Deborah Orr, published by the Guardian in June 2011 (link at the end of this post). Ms Orr asks, ‘Why is feminism still so afraid to focus on its flaws?’ Wow, isn’t that the $64,000 question?

The position of leading feminists hasn’t moved a centimetre towards focusing on feminism’s flaws in the intervening 28 months, and I suspect it never will. Feminists focus on inventing ever more tortuous ways to assert women are oppressed by ‘the patriarchy’ while to anyone with an IQ in double figures, looking at the realities of the world about them, feminist arguments become ever more absurd over time. Feminism is, above all else, a faith position immune to rational challenging. Maybe that’s why they never enter into rational debates.

Every element of ‘feminist theory’ is demonstrably untrue, to the best of my knowledge. Compared with ‘patriarchy theory’, ‘fairies at the bottom of the garden theory’ seems positively plausible by comparison.